The Law That Villainized Mexicans: Hart-Celler Act of 1965 Created Immigration "Crisis"

Pres. Johnson speaks on Immigration Act of 1965

by Ben Mathis-Lilley | The Slate Group

As Fox News debate moderators reminded America last week, Donald Trump believes that “the
Mexican government is forcing their most unwanted people”—including drug dealers and rapists,
who are “doing the raping”—into the United States as illegal immigrants. Trump nonetheless wants
to make clear that he has no problem with legal immigration. “Many fabulous people come in from
Mexico and our country is better for it,” Trump wrote in a July statement. “But these people are
here legally, and are severely hurt by those coming in illegally.” Almost all conservative
politicians who believe illegal immigration is a problem make the same distinction: Ted Cruz’s
website, for example, says the senator “celebrates legal immigration,” while Marco Rubio used a
debate answer to praise the patience of immigrants who wait their turn for a visa. Trump said during
the debate that he wants to build a wall on the border but would include “a big beautiful door
in that wall” for legal entry.

It wasn’t always this way. Fifty years ago a substantial number of conservative United States
senators openly supported severe restrictions on legal immigration, influencing a bill that helped
create the modern Mexican “illegal” immigration “crisis” as we know it.

In 1965, President Johnson backed a reform proposal called the Hart-Celler Act (aka the
Immigration and Nationality Act), which proposed to eradicate the “national origins” immigration
quotas that had been in place since the 1920s. Those quotas prohibited vast non-white portions of
the world population (e.g. almost all Africans and Asians) from immigrating to the U.S. while
restricting the number of visas allotted to European countries, like Italy and Poland, whose
natives were considered ethnically inferior to those from England, Scandinavia, and the like.
Under the new system...